Development of a GIS application for field collection of point-based geospatial data

Abstract

Ovaj rad opisuje postupak izrade jednostavne WebGIS aplikacije za terensko prikupljanje točkastih geoprostornih podataka u Republici Hrvatskoj pomoću geolokacije korisnika u stvarnom vremenu. Aplikacija pod nazivom „Geokolektor“ razvijena je korištenjem dostupnih web tehnologija i alata HTML, CSS i JavaScript te OpenLayers biblioteke za prikaz i upravljanje geoprostornim podacima kao i bilježenje koordinate i vrijednosti jednog atributa. Kao rezultat rada, razvijena je responzivna aplikacija dostupna putem internetskog preglednika pomoću GitHub Pages servisa, koja omogućuje korisnicima prikupljanje i spremanje geoprostornih točkastih značajki u datoteku s GeoJSON zapisom podataka. Provedeno je terensko testiranje rada izrađene aplikacije temeljeno na preuzimanju koordinata lokacije internim, mobilnim GPS-om te korištenjem povezane vanjske, „pametne“ antene Leica FLX100 plus. Obrada, analiza i vizualizacija dobivenih rezultata provedena je u softveru QGIS te su izneseni i komentirani zaključci o točnosti površina poligona kao i mogućnosti korištenja mobilnog i vanjskog GPS-a uz razvijenu aplikaciju Geokolektor.This paper describes the development process of a simple WebGIS application for field collection of point-based geospatial data in the Republic of Croatia using real-time user geolocation. The application, named „Geokolektor“, was developed using available web technologies and tools such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, along with the OpenLayers library for displaying and managing geospatial data, as well as for recording coordinates and a single attribute value. As a result of this work, a responsive application was created and made accessible via a web browser using the GitHub Pages service. It allows users to collect and save geospatial point features into a file with GeoJSON-formatted data. Field testing of the developed application was conducted, based on location coordinate acquisition using the internal, mobile GPS and an external, „smart“ antenna, Leica FLX100 plus. The processing, analysis, and visualization of the collected data were performed in the QGIS software. The paper presents and discusses the conclusions regarding the accuracy of polygon areas, as well as the usability of both mobile and external GPS service in combination with the developed Geokolektor application